i-lign 8.4 release information

By Rachel | May 25, 2018

Work on i-lign 8.4 has been going well. The main focus of our release is updating our Benefits Management and Strategy features. We’re now able to offer our hosted customers a preview of this work. Work on other aspects such as improving our timesheets is currently in progress.

Our tentative release date for hosted customers is scheduled for Sunday 15 July.

Please get in touch if you’d like us to set up a preview of your i-lign instance or you have any other questions or comments.

Benefits management

Organisations expect that their investment in both current and new areas of work will generate benefits of some sort. However, without ongoing attention, these benefits do not always materialise fully, if at all. As a result benefits management has become a significant focus for many organisations.

Benefits are defined in i-lign 8.4 as the positive outcomes expected as a result of the work being carried out. For example a benefit may be increased staff engagement or increased customer loyalty or increased profit. These benefits can be financial or non financial in nature. They may have measures attached which help track how well they’re being achieved. Benefits in i-lign are assigned a gold, silver or bronze value which enables you to compare benefits of different types.

i-lign’s benefit approach in 8.4 is based on two principles:

  1. Benefit Owners are accountable for their benefits from the time the work starts.
  2. Benefit Reviews are carried out regularly from the from the time the work starts.

Following these principles increases the likelihood your benefits will be fully realised. This is why Benefit ownership and benefit reviews are central to the changes we’ve made to our benefits feature.

You can now can add benefits to Services and Activities as well as Programmes and Projects. You’ll need to toggle to the Value view to see the Benefits tab.

For more information on how benefits work in i-lign 8.4, see on our updated Benefits Management tutorial

Strategy

We also improve our Strategy feature in 8.4. Strategic Drivers can now be reviewed and a RAG status (Red, Amber, Green) applied. The KPI graphs are also updated and the abilty to add a RAG status included. The screenshot below shows how to navigate to the Strategy view.

Timesheet improvements

We’re currently working on timesheet improvements to give people more control over the items they see on their timesheet each week. Below is a prototype of the timesheet changes - it’s likely some of these details will change.

New look

As you will have seen from the screen shots above, we’re also changing the look of i-lign in 8.4, to give it at more contemporary feel. See the screenshot below for an example of the new look.

Tentative release date for hosted customers

Our tentative release date for 8.4 is Sunday 15 July. As always, this timetable is subject to successful completion of development work and testing.

Don’t forget to get in touch if you’d like us to set up a preview of your i-lign instance or you have any other questions or comments.